But Nadab and Abihu died before their father did, and they had no sons; so Eleazar and Ithamar served as the priests. – 1 Chronicles 24:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 25, 2012): 1 Chronicles 24

I am amused by Conspiracy Theories. I am not naïve enough to think that we know everything, but some of the theories seem so farfetched. The other day I was listening to a radio phone-in show that was devoted to various conspiracy theories. And part of the amusing part of the show was that the host was not a believer, and you could feel her getting more and more exasperated as the show progressed. One caller wanted to talk about the wars that the United States had entered. His theory was that the government was the cause of all of the conflicts that the country had been involve in. And his example was the attack on Pearl Harbor. And of course he knew the established facts of the attack. For him, the facts were that the Japanese government took out an advertisement in the New York Times advertising their plan to attack the U.S. naval base in Hawaii. My first reaction was how stupid do we think that the Japanese are? I mean, spend money on an advertisement so that the U.S. knows about the surprise attack, how does that make any sense? And, of course the answer is that it does not make any sense. But, for the conspiracy theorist, the reality that he needed to press was that the fault for the December attack on Pearl Harbor really lay with the United States government and not with the Japanese – and the reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor was that the U.S needed an excuse to get them into the Second World War – and, therefore, they purposely ignored all of the information pertaining to the Japanese planned attack on Hawaii. And of course, for the conspiracy theorist, that means that this has been the pattern for every war that the United States has fought.

Now, I may not buy the Japanese advertisement theory, but that does not mean that the U.S. did not know of the attack. It has been argued that the U.S. had intercepted radio communications and had broken the code and that they knew the Japanese were coming. But the reality was that they made a mistake; if they knew Japanese were coming, they had decided that it was not a credible threat. They believed that the Japanese did not have the ability to carry through with the attack.

Most of the sin that we commit is not because we did not know, it is because at some point we figured out that there was no credible threat. Nadab and Abihu offered an unauthorized sacrifice to God. They knew that it was wrong, but they decided that there was not a credible threat so they did it anyway. And the result was that Nadab and Abihu died without children – they were effectively erased from the history of the nation.

The author of Chronicles wanted his readers to understand that their predicament – their exile in Babylon – was not because of their ignorance, but rather because they did not consider the dictates of God a credible threat. And as they returned home, they had to change their behavior. If God said it, chances are that he meant it. And his hope was that the readers would come to the conclusion that they should act according to that belief.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 25